It was lovely to go away last week but even lovelier to return – I always find that to be the case.

Before we went away, the green woodpecker eggs had hatched in the wood and the young chicks were making a right old noise. We were enjoying views of the young birds sticking their heads out of the hole and could see that there were at least two young in there:

The day after we got back from holiday, I went to the wood to meet up with a dormouse expert who was going to tour the boxes with me. She would hopefully then be prepared to be a second referee for my application for a dormouse disturbance license from Natural England. Before she arrived, I went round collecting the SD cards from the cameras and found that all was now quiet at the woodpecker nest.

When I looked at the photos, I could see that the chicks had got much bigger:

Then, on 15th June, one of the chicks emerged from the hole:

The parents continued to feed the chicks that were remaining in the tree:

It wasn’t until the next day that the second chick fledged:

But it seems that there was a third chick in the nest as well, which the adult birds went on feeding:

This final chick finally left the tree the following day and there were then no further green woodpecker visits:

I read that the clutch size for green woodpeckers is 4-6 eggs so there could well be unhatched eggs or dead chicks remaining within the nest, but I think that three successful fledgings is a very good result and hope to now see these chicks on other cameras around the wood.

I didn’t take a camera with me on the tour round the dormouse boxes, but I did take a few photos on my phone. This nest is interesting because it has a woven grass core and a few added hazel leaves constructed on top of an old mossy bird nest. We suspected that this is a dormouse nest, albeit an unusual one, but no one was home. It will be interesting to see if anyone is in there next month:

I am not sure if this is an old bee, wasp or hornet nest in box 40:

Box 45 had a dead dormouse in it unfortunately. In attendance was this beautiful sexton beetle:

The sexton beetle was never going to be able to bury this dormouse since it was not on the ground and, anyway, we had to evict the beetle because we needed to send the corpse off for a post mortem. Such is the terrible recent decline in the UK hazel dormouse population that any information on their well being is potentially of use.

As I walked to the post office in the village to send the parcel, I came across this man cutting a hedge. He tells me that this contraption, which spreads the weight of the hedge trimmer away from just the arms and shoulders, is a game changer. We have a lot of hedges to cut ourselves which I find very challenging for my arms, so this was of interest to me. It looked absolutely hilarious though:

ZSL will get back to me in due course with the results of the post mortem, so we shall wait to see what went on there in box 45. In the meantime, I do now have two referees to support my application for a dormouse disturbance licence and I’ve submitted it this week. It has been a long journey – I have needed to attend two day courses at the Wildwood Trust and am now into my third year of monthly tours (April to November) around our fifty nest boxes under the kind and watchful eye of my volunteer trainer, to whom I am very much indebted.

Other photos from the wood:

The other nest that we were watching before we went on holiday was back at the meadows, in the swift box attached to the house. Before we left, a second egg had been laid:

Then egg incubation commenced. Both parents took it in turns to sit on the eggs whilst the other went out to feed. But both birds were safely back in the box by the time darkness finally fell each night:

Incubation started after the second egg was laid on 29th May so I knew that the eggs would be hatching on 17th-19th June while we were away. I plugged my computer into the camera on our return on the 21st and saw that there was definitely a chick in there with them. It was being constantly incubated by a parent though and I only got the most fleeting of glimpses. It wasn’t until 23rd June that I got a proper view:

For the first time, on 26th June, I saw the nest without an adult on it and realised that there were in fact two chicks, now starting to get feathers, but that one was bigger than the other:

Elsewhere in the meadows, I suspect that we might have lost one of the badgers cubs whilst we are away because I have only been seeing a maximum of two in photos since we’ve returned. Mortality in badger cubs is very high – sadly only one in three cubs survives to be a year old.

I am enjoying seeing newly-fledged birds around the meadows:

Sparrowhawk are always on the look out for naive young birds, which make easy prey for them:

And it’s nice to see the buzzard back in the meadows again:

I saw a new species of fly down at the pond this week – the semaphore fly, Poecilobothrus nobilitatus. The ring of flies at the water’s edge here are the females. The larger males, with white tips to their wings, are standing off to the sides. They were signalling to the females by flicking their wings and doing little courtship dances to try to impress them.

The ponds are also busy with damselflies and dragonflies:

This emperor dragonfly was repeatedly returning to this same spot to lay her eggs. It was really fascinating to see that there was newt positioned in the water below her, presumably trying to eat the eggs as they were laid:

The newt was there for a long time until a wallowing dog disturbed it. After all, it’s been hot and she’s got a black fur coat on:

A few other interesting invertebrates in the meadows this month:

I finish this week with a photo from our conservatory:

I have never seen this before – the hunter has become the hunted. A large house spider has been caught and wrapped up by another spider and was left dangling from the windowsill. I have to admit to being not very keen on spiders and I did find this rather all rather disturbing.